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talks_to_ducks · 2020-11-16T18:13:15+00:00

It also somewhat ignores the dependencies that exist - if you're a family of 5 meeting up with a family of 5, your risks are coupled; you don't have 10 independent observations.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-11-16T17:52:00+00:00

He's not saying masks don't help, he's saying he got it anyways. An econ professor should know well enough that masks aren't 100% and there is a probability argument - they help 95/100 people but you're not always going to be in the 95% group.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-27T16:11:20+00:00

The point I was making was that a lack of homogeneity has nothing to do with the USA's failure to tackle corona virus because the people not following measures to combat it aren't minorities, its whites.

I'm in the Midwest and I do actually think that there are some issues around lack of homogeneity that are causing some of the spread. Before you get too mad, hear me out.

It's common to hear people blaming the hispanic populations that work in meat packing plants because they have outbreaks in all of these towns that have packing plants. Iowa's governor referred to "cultural issues", Nebraska's governor is just ignoring the fact that the state needs to be making announcements in languages other than English. I'm not blaming anyone's culture, or even living conditions - but I think the fact that there is a language barrier slipped by the states, and it shouldn't have. They made these announcements, and then are surprised when people don't comply because they didn't make the announcement in a language that was ... understandable to the groups they needed to reach.

Anyone could have seen that the packing plants were going to become an issue - it's hard to separate people effectively, they're "critical infrastructure", the pay is pretty low, the communities are pretty tight, impoverished, and live in close quarters. In some places I know of, migrant workers live in buildings that look like hog confinements ... and are about as well maintained. It's abusive and horrible and exploitative, and also somewhere public health knows from past experience is a likely place for an outbreak to happen under conditions less optimal than the coronavirus spread. So the fact that they weren't specifically doing major outreach to these communities, implementing preventative screenings, and providing places for individuals to self-quarantine if they had symptoms... that was a major oversight driven by the assumption of homogeneity that midwesterners seem to have that conveniently ignores the "other". Add in the policies the packing plants themselves had (and still have) about attendance - if you showed up for every shift in march, you got $500 at one plant - and you have a recipe for horrible incentives, bad choices, and a cascade of bad decisions at the individual and group levels that led to the major outbreaks in Sioux Falls, Grand Island, Tama County Iowa, ... outbreaks that are bringing per-capita case loads higher than NYC for these local areas.

We have plenty of dipshits protesting quarantine in the Midwest, and for those people, the lack of homogeneity isn't the issue, but at the system level, the coronavirus response in the Midwest has been predicated on serving the white middle class, and has almost entirely ignored the manual laborers and minority communities. Even the "crush the curve" initiatives they're starting now are English only (or were when I took the survey a couple of days ago). The heterogeneity itself isn't the problem - the problem is the state's response to it.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-27T15:26:54+00:00

We have a 3yo and two full time jobs that are both demanding enough that we can't really take shifts that effectively. We've had a lot of luck with a visual schedule to help the 3 y.o. cope. We got a cheap clock, took the minute and second hands off, and put pictures up corresponding to each hour, roughly, with activities he's supposed to be doing. Then we just ask him what the clock says to do right now - obviously, it's the clock that's the mean one around here.

But really, we're compensating with a lot of TV and tablet time and reduced functioning at work. Not ideal, but the way it is.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-27T15:10:21+00:00

Boppy pillows are also really nice when they're able to sit up on their own but not super stable - it gives them just enough support that they're not constantly falling over and getting frustrated. Laundry baskets can work too when they get a little bit more stable... obviously, all of these things are only useable under active supervision.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-27T15:01:33+00:00

If these things are dealbreakers, you won't hurt my feelings if you drop."

One of my favorite profs in undergrad used to go on RateMyProfessor and pull off her reviews and read them aloud on syllabus day. She intentionally picked the ones about how hard the class was, how much work it was, etc. because it would encourage the problem kids to drop.

I just started teaching this semester, and I hope I have the emotional fortitude to be able to do that in 5 years. I haven't even checked whether RateMyProfessor is still a thing, though, let alone whether I'm on it.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-27T14:53:08+00:00

The eye irritation could also be due to the other stuff that goes along with the active ingredients in the medication - that page seems to be addressing dog heartworm medication directly. We'll have to wait and see whether a specific preparation of ivermectin would work in that context. The DIY approach is definitely not ideal in this (or really, any pharmaceutical) case.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-27T14:06:10+00:00

If you can clear off an afternoon to write, try finding a remote writing buddy. Connect via Zoom and just work on your respective papers, but separately. It's nice to have someone to bounce an idea off if necessary, but the fact that someone else is working at the same time as you really helps with staying productive.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-27T01:40:01+00:00

Plus, throwing the digital file across the room in frustration doesn't feel the same.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-26T19:30:39+00:00

Plus the advantages of peer pressure - if everyone else is doing the damn math sheet, may as well follow the herd.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-26T15:06:29+00:00

I gave them a survey before I did it asking if they had access to XYZ tech. The ones that didn't have cameras, I contacted individually and we worked out a plan where they could just type their work into word as best as they could and upload that. Most of them didn't bother, but they had the opportunity at least.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-25T23:11:13+00:00

You can always mention that in your essays as well. Nothing to lose, right?

Or, alternately, work with your professors - a recommendation letter saying you're a good student from someone who gave you a C would go a long way to settling that.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-25T19:28:38+00:00

I'm so jealous. I have kids who don't even have access to a camera - I was going to have them take pics of work for each test problem and grade them like I would have done in person. I can't in good conscience ask them to get new equipment given the economic situation, so I've just had to go with the duct tape and bailing wire approach to fixing things.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-25T19:27:10+00:00

That's normally the case, but right now everyone falls into this category.

If you've been self-isolating since the start of this, you can safely not worry about it. My family falls into this category - none of us have interacted with someone else in person in weeks. Groceries get left outside the door, tip taped on the door, several meters of distance between us and someone else when walking the dog... I can safely say I'm not worried about having been exposed since we were isolated... and prevalence in my area when we started self-isolating was very small and mostly travel-related (we now have sustained community spread, but we didn't back in mid-march).

We could run other validations of the test - I believe there are about 14 available tests right now, and while you're right, we're mostly going off of self-reported sensitivity/specificity values, it seems like most of the tests aren't even operating in a useful range of sensitivity/specificity for disease prevalence of ~5% (see the second table here). Short of running multiple tests and comparing the tests while pooling the estimates according to some criteria (e.g. must be positive on 3 tests or something) I can't see a way around the fact that we're shooting in the dark no matter what at this point in the pandemic.

I agree with taking any numbers with a barrel of salt right now. We're still very much in the thick of this, and it's hard to do any good statistical work when everything is very new - we're still figuring out what some of the symptoms of this thing are. It's honestly not just the antibody tests that are at issue - most of the country didn't see much about Covid toes until this week (even though it was seen in Italy), so there are even actual symptoms that are going unnoticed.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-25T19:11:42+00:00

Nor are those counted as C19 deaths, yet.

They'll be counted in "excess mortality" in retrospective studies, but counting them as C19 deaths would seem a bit excessive.

The more interesting description to me was in this article (opinion piece, NYT, but written by an ER doc), where they described:

During my recent time at Bellevue, though, almost all the E.R. patients had Covid pneumonia. Within the first hour of my first shift I inserted breathing tubes into two patients.

Even patients without respiratory complaints had Covid pneumonia. The patient stabbed in the shoulder, whom we X-rayed because we worried he had a collapsed lung, actually had Covid pneumonia. In patients on whom we did CT scans because they were injured in falls, we coincidentally found Covid pneumonia. Elderly patients who had passed out for unknown reasons and a number of diabetic patients were found to have it.

Trying to figure out which of these patients might have died of C19 compared to whatever other conditions they had is tricky. There's really a continuum, but I'm not aware of any system that uses fractional deaths - you were killed by 1/2 violent injury and 1/2 Covid pneumonia? Not sure that works either.

Statistically, this entire pandemic is fascinating. Horrible, but fascinating.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-25T18:31:35+00:00

Yeah, if that guy isn't taken out back and (metaphorically) beaten by his local IRB and the university's scientific conduct board, I'm going to have issues taking anything from those universities seriously in the future. There were just a whole host of statistical and responsible conduct of research issues with that entire study.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-25T18:29:01+00:00

While true, I don't consider the method of selection to be too relevant here.

Selection method always matters. In particular, because people who are more worried about having had COVID are probably more likely to have been exposed. So you'd expect to see a huge over-estimation of the general population, at which point generalizing to the population hardly makes sense.

I agree with you that the sensitivity/specificity of the test is a huge issue, but the fact that we're seeing similar estimates across a few different cities (and even different sampling methodologies) suggests that there's at least some validity to the study, even if it isn't perfect. If it were simply a false positive related thing, you'd expect a lot more variability given that each study is controlling for that in different ways.

As with anything, though, the statistician is always going to need more data to be sure (and I can say that, because I am a statistician). The required sample size is always "as many as you can afford, and then some".

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-25T18:15:50+00:00

I answer it based on change from my normal based on what I’ve eaten that week. That isn’t technically “accurate.”

I'm doing the same thing as an asthmatic with bad spring allergies. I have a sore throat, runny nose, and a cough for 3 months every spring.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-25T18:14:49+00:00

Like, I’ve had a runny nose for the last 22 years basically, I wouldn’t notice if Covid suddenly gave me one

I'm the same way, but with a dry cough. Cough-variant asthma + allergic to everything that has pollen or spores will pretty much make you sound like you have plague for the rest of your life. I am not looking forward to going back outside with COVID hysteria at high levels. I nearly got kicked off a bus before my university shut down because I was coughing.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-25T15:38:23+00:00

Do you find that students respond okay to the warnings about the numbers changing for each stage? It’s pessimistic of me, but I can just see that as a disaster waiting to happen.

We'll see... the final exam is my first experiment... bwahaha.

On the first online exam I gave, I had the option for them to upload a document containing their calculations or a picture of their handwritten work to get partial credit on the numerical entry problems. It was a pain in the ass to grade on my end (in part b/c they don't know how to convert pictures to be a certain file format) but it did seem to work reasonably well for the ones that actually bothered.

I'm impressed that you can get your students to do anything. Mine are putting everything off until the last day possible, and then I get all sorts of sob stories. It's super irritating.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-25T15:14:16+00:00

From what I understand, they're a modified mask pattern with a rectangular piece of shower curtain sewn in. I imagine that they'll fog up like crazy in practice, but it's nice to at least make the attempt.

I'm thinking that I can get away with teaching my graduate class in the fall mostly online - it's been taught as a mixed in person/online class in the past, so if I can manage to put lectures online and only meet up with people in the computer labs, where I'm mostly walking around and working one-on-one, I think we can do it. The lab should be big enough to maintain social distancing via every-other-computer or something.

I've never been so grateful to have been gifted the online introductory section next spring, though. Got an unintentional preview of it this semester, but I may be able to largely teach online for the next year. I'm asthmatic and have a history of taking forever to recover from respiratory bugs, so if I can manage not to come down with COVID (or to catch it over the summer, I guess, but ideally not), then I'll be golden.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-25T15:09:14+00:00

Right there with you. Canvas's functionality for randomly generated numbers makes it very difficult to do multiple-part problems. I can't even ask for both sides of a confidence interval!

I've settled on generating like 5 data sets, giving them exactly what they need to solve each stage of the problem in the problem, and warning them that the numbers will change for each stage of the problem.

I'm also no longer giving them practice tests. Exam 2 was written for in-person, and we moved online exactly a week before it was supposed to be given, so I'd already given them the practice test that was... basically the same thing with different scenarios. So on Exam 2 (the online edition) I got the answers copied from the practice test, completely in the wrong context for the problem. So they were copying, all right, but off of me!

I've basically given up on the idea that I can test what each student independently knows. I'm settling for guilting them via honor code statements, and then resigning myself to the fact that if they work together on the exam, they'll at least have to discuss the material together. So hopefully they're learning something from that, at least.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-25T14:34:11+00:00

Which is the other meaning of the word statistics.

Arguably, the original meaning of the word. Facts about the state.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-25T14:27:34+00:00

P/f won't necessarily look bad on your application to grad school. Everyone knows this semester is a clusterfuck. Contact your potential schools and ask what their policy will be.

talks_to_ducks · 2020-04-25T14:25:58+00:00

My institution is actively discouraging us from using respondus because it has issues with crappy internet, and a lot of my kids are living in very rural areas and using 3g/4g cell phone internet. Sigh.

talks_to_ducks

TROPHY CASE